We are powered up for a Special Edition COBT with our good friend, David Tudor. David is the Chief Executive Officer and General Manager of Associated Electric Cooperative Incorporated (AECI), a member-owned electric co-op serving two million customers in Missouri, Iowa and Oklahoma. David joined AECI in 2016 and has previously held positions at Champion Energy Services (CEO), ACES Power Marketing (CEO), and PG&E Energy Trading in his extensive energy career. It was a timely discussion given the recent blackout challenges Texas and other states are facing with summer weather heating up. 

AECI recently held their Annual Meeting with key themes including reliability, regulatory developments, and natural gas. The conference brought together over 750 people representing co-ops, utilities, banks, and power companies. Colin Fenton and I had the opportunity to speak about the increasing importance of natural gas domestically and globally and really enjoyed the conference and group of attendees. 

In our COBT discussion with David, we cover how AECI is uniquely positioned to focus on reliability, the co-op structure and what differentiates it from other models, AECI's portfolio of energy sources, current supply-chain issues with the US railroad system, the potential for new technology that is both reliable and less land intensive than solar, the future of AECI, federal involvement generally, and the challenging summer ahead for both electricity providers and customers. Thank you to David for joining and providing some fantastic insights! 

We had a quick upfront discussion: Mike Bradley had two key points about the markets and the junk bond market. Colin Fenton noted WTI is now trading at a price premium to Brent and prepped us for our conversation with a few thoughts on reliability and summer price spikes.